Today I Learned …

In 1799, a American privateer warship, the Nancy, was seized by a British warship, the Sparrow, in the Caribbean, a region forbidden to American ships at the time. Anticipating capture, the Nancy‘s skipper, Thomas Briggs, threw the ship’s American registration papers overboard and replaced them with Dutch forgeries. Charged in Jamaica with smuggling contraband, Briggs looked set to walk free for lack of evidence until, toward the end of the trial, another British warship, HMS Ferret, arrived in port. The Ferret had caught a large shark off the coast of Haiti, and inside the shark’s stomach were the incriminating American papers that Briggs had thrown in the ocean. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)